Pakistan’s former captain Younus Khan has said that he played keeping in mind the requirement of the team and reached his century. He said that he first kept playing the ball and when it started to come onto the bat he developed his innings. “I played session by session and ball by ball to get back to form and it was the requirement of the team,” he added.
“Azhar did a great job at the other end and when we began to see the ball properly, we started taking singles and doubles,” he maintained. The pair also added 194 runs unbeaten stand for the third wicket which was also the second highest against England. Younus and Mohammad Yousuf scored 363 runs at Leeds in a losing cause against England.
It was frustrating but bad patch is gone and now I am happy to score a century, he added. It was Younus’ second century against England and he was the 12th Pakistan batsman to have scored two centuries against the visitors. “I was not aware of the fact. I just came in with one thing in mind that I need to score runs. There was pressure for not scoring.
But I had one thing in mind: stay at the wicket and play positive. The wicket is batting friendly and the fourth innings wicket would be difficult to play on. We would try to get 350 plus runs. “We would try to post maximum possible score on the board and then press for a clean sweep,” he maintained. Meanwhile Alister Cook said that the pitch has eased up.
“The match is still on and we would try to get wickets in the early session to stay in the match. It’s not easy to score in Asian conditions and we need to concentrate on our batting because we would be playing most of our cricket in Asia this year,” he added.
